1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a kit for detecting folate and, more particularly, to a method and a kit for rapidly and safely detecting folate.
2. Description of Related Art
Folic acid (folate) is an essential vitamin. In cells, it is often reduced into dihydrofolate (DHF) and tetrahydrofolate (THF), the biologically active forms. Additional glutamate residues are then added to form folyl polyglutamates. THF carries chemically activated one-carbon units (1-C) on N-5 and/or N-10 positions and these one-carbon units are required for the biosynthesis of many important molecules such as nucleic acids, amino acids, proteins, neurotransmitters, and some other vitamins. Therefore, THF plays an important role in the metabolism of these molecules. In addition, deficiency of folate has been implicated in many pathological conditions including neural tube defects (NTDs), cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
Generally, mammals are unable to synthesize folate and are, therefore, mostly dependent on their food supply for this vitamin. However, folate is very unstable and easily destroyed in the cooking process. This might be one of the reasons why folate deficiency occurs more often than any other vitamin deficiency in humans.
High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is commonly used for folate detection. Before HPLC analysis, [glutamate]n of folyl polyglutamates has to be removed from a sample. At present, a large amount of addition of animal serum or tissue extracts is executed to remove [glutamate]n in most traditional methods.
In the aforesaid methods, processing a sample approximately takes several hours or up to tens of hours. However, a large amount of folate is degraded owing to its instability and thermolability during the aforementioned process, resulting in a great loss of folate. Furthermore, a large amount of addition of animal serum or tissue extracts makes the sample diluted and then influences reliability of the test results as well as increasing the risk of infecting lab operators.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a new method for detecting folate to overcome the above drawbacks and to identify the amount and the ratio of different folate derivatives in a tested sample.